Skip to search
Skip to main content
Catalog
Help
Feedback
Your Account
Library Account
Bookmarks
(
0
)
Search History
Search in
Keyword
Title (keyword)
Author (keyword)
Subject (keyword)
Title starts with
Subject (browse)
Author (browse)
Author (sorted by title)
Call number (browse)
search for
Search
Advanced Search
Bookmarks
(
0
)
Princeton University Library Catalog
Start over
Cite
Send
to
SMS
Email
EndNote
RefWorks
RIS
Printer
Bookmark
Matatu : a history of popular transportation in Nairobi / Kenda Mutongi.
Author
Mutongi, Kenda
[Browse]
Format
Book
Language
English
Published/Created
Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 2017.
©2017
Description
vi, 350 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm
Availability
Available Online
OAPEN Open
Copies in the Library
Location
Call Number
Status
Location Service
Notes
Firestone Library - Stacks
HE283.5.Z7 N35 2017
Browse related items
Request
Details
Subject(s)
Transportation
—
Kenya
—
Nairobi
[Browse]
Minibuses
—
Kenya
—
Nairobi
[Browse]
Local transit
—
Kenya
—
Nairobi
[Browse]
Urban transportation policy
—
Kenya
—
Nairobi
[Browse]
Summary note
Drive the streets of Nairobi and you are sure to see many matatus colorful minibuses that transport huge numbers of people around the city. Once ramshackle affairs held together with duct tape and wire, matatus today are name-brand vehicles maxed out with aftermarket detailing. They can be stately black or come in extravagant colors, sporting names, slogans, or entire tableaus, with airbrushed portraits of everyone from Kanye West to Barack Obama, of athletes, movie stars, or the most famous face of all: Jesus Christ. In this richly interdisciplinary book, Kenda Mutongi explores the history of the matatu from the 1960s to the present. As Mutongi shows, matatus offer a window onto many socioeconomic and political facets of late-twentieth-century Africa. In their diversity of idiosyncratic designs they express multiple and divergent aspects of Kenyan life including rapid urbanization, organized crime, entrepreneurship, social insecurity, the transition to democracy, chaos and congestion, popular culture, and many others at once embodying both Kenya's staggering social problems and the bright promises of its future. Offering a shining model of interdisciplinary analysis, Mutongi mixes historical, ethnographic, literary, linguistic, and economic approaches to tell the story of the matatu as a powerful expression of the entrepreneurial aesthetics of the postcolonial world.
Bibliographic references
Includes bibliographical references (pages 267-344) and index.
Contents
Introduction: Matatu "The only way to get there was on foot"
Moving people, building the nation, 1960-73
"It is a difficult system to beat"
"We are making a living by constitutional means"
Deregulation, 1973-84
Kenyatta's decree, 1973
"Jump in, squeeze, jump out - quickly!"
Government regulation, 1984-88
The Matatu bill of 1984
"Only those who are afraid use force"
Organized crime? 1988-2014
KANYU youth wingers
Mungiki: fighting a phantom?
Generation matatu, politics, and popular culture, 1990-2014
Music, politics, and profit
"Pimp" my ride
Self-regulation, 2003-14
The michuki rules
Conclusion: making it in Nairobi.
Show 16 more Contents items
ISBN
9780226130866 (hardcover ; : alkaline paper)
022613086X (hardcover ; : alkaline paper)
9780226471396 (paperback ; : alkaline paper)
022647139X (paperback ; : alkaline paper)
LCCN
2016057140
OCLC
958781205
Statement on language in description
Princeton University Library aims to describe library materials in a manner that is respectful to the individuals and communities who create, use, and are represented in the collections we manage.
Read more...
Other views
Staff view
Ask a Question
Suggest a Correction
Report Harmful Language
Supplementary Information
Other versions
Matatu : a history of popular transportation in Nairobi / Kenda Mutongi.
id
99127184914706421